Human-powered helicopter flight sets record

August 15, 2012

ByDan Namowitz

The National Aeronautic Association has certified a duration record for human-powered helicopter flight claimed by a team from the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering for a flight on June 21 in College Park, Md.

Pilot Kyle Gluesenkamp, a Ph.D. candidate in the Clark School’s mechanical engineering department, provided the power, pedaling the program’s lightweight, four-rotor aircraft, Gamera II and remaining airborne for 49.9 seconds. The flight achieved a new record in the human-powered class, rotorcraft subclass, said Art Greenfield, NAA’s director of contests and records.

The team remains focused on refining the aircraft’s design to capture the $250,000 American Helicopter Society’s Sikorsky Prize, said Clark School Dean Darryll Pines in a news release after the June flight. Earning the Sikorsky prize would require Gamera II to fly a full minute in a hover, reach a height of three meters at some point during the minute, and remain within a 10-square-meter area during the flight.

Mark Scheuer was tired of yelling at his wife across the noisy cockpit of their Grumman Yankee, and he thought there had to be a better way of communicating. PS Engineering Inc. was born out of that necessity and is now celebrating its third decade of forging new ground in cockpit communication technology.